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TWO LECTURES 



ON THE 



ifiskty of % American (Jlnion. 



1 



HENRY REED, 



LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVAMA. 




PHILADELPHIA: 
PARRY & M C M I L L AN, 

SUCCESSORS TO A. DART, late CAREY & HART. 

185G. 



>fc*r 



Entered according to Aet of Congress, in the year 1856, by 

parry & McMillan, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern 
District of Pennsylvania. 



STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON AND CO. 
PHILADELPHIA. 



Printed by T. K. & P. G. Collins. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 



These Lectures were written for the Smithsonian 
Institute at Washington, and delivered there a few years 
ago. At the time, they attracted great attention ; and 
they are now reproduced in the hope that such a re- 
trospect as they afford of the Providential processes 
which created the Union, may not be without interest 
and use at a time when adverse sectional excitements en- 
danger it. They have no reference to party questions, 
past or present. The historical review ends with the 
establishment of the Union, and has no relation to what 
has happened since. They therefore give offence to no 
one, unless it be to those who, looking at the Union as 

the mere creation of human agencies, are willing that 

3 



4 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

fanaticisms and passions of one kind or another — the 
weaknesses of our human nature — shall destroy it. To 
such, the author did not speak. He humbly and in- 
telligently looked upon the Union as the blessed work 
of Grod, and as such, loved and revered it. 

W. B. K. 
Philadelphia, July 17, 1856. 



LECTURE FIRST. 



THE UNION. 



FIRST LECTURE. 

The Union originating in the Providential Government of the World — Illus- 
trations of Ancient and Modern History — European Colonization of America 
— Saxondom — The Northmen — Spanish and Portuguese Colonization — Bull 
of Alexander VI. — Tendency in English Colonies to local Self-government 
and local Independence — The American element — Cabot's Discoveries — Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert — Raleigh — The Fairy Queen and Virginia — French Colonial 
Policy — The Atlantic Settlements — The Creation of the Materials for the Union. 

My theme is the growth of the American 
Union during the colonial era of our history. 
In treating such a subject, it is my desire to say, 
in the first place, that I shall purposely forbear 
speaking of the Union as it now exists, w T ith its 
manifold and countless blessings, its present 
estate, and its prospects. It is the retrospect 
which I intend to turn to ; and in that retrospect 
there is abundance both of admonition and en- 
couragement for all after-time, much to inspire 
a thoughtful loyalty to the Union, and a deep 
sense of responsibility for each generation com- 
ing to live within that Union and to transmit 
it unimpaired to posterity, such as it has grown 
to be, not by man's will or sagacity, but by the 
providential government of the world. 



8 THE UNION. 

In speaking of history as making manifest 
suck providential government of the world, I do 
but recognise and follow one of the highest 
principles which we owe to the improved culture 
of historical science in the present century. That 
improvement is not alone in more laborious and 
dutiful habits of research, in the more studious 
use of original documents, but in a truer philo- 
sophy of history, not such as in a former age, 
arrogating the title of philosophy, contracted its 
vision within the scant range of scepticism, but a 
philosophy which reverently traces on the annals 
of the human race marks of more than human 
agency, — an overruling Providence. As in that 
which is especially denominated " sacred history" 
the purposes of the Creator are expressly re- 
vealed, so in that which is styled, in contradis- 
tinction, "profane history," as purposes of the 
same Creator must needs exist, the thoughtful 
student may gain at least some glimpses of them, 
and yet refrain all the while from rash interpre- 
tation of the divine will in the guidance and 
government of man and of the races of man to 
whom the earth is parcelled out. 

It becomes more practicable to trace these pro- 
vidential purposes when we look over long tracts 
of time. The history of Rome, for instance, with 
its twelve centuries of growth, and decay, and 
ruin : — in one point of view, what is it but a pur- 
poseless record of strife, external and internal — 



THE UNION. 9 

conquest and the domestic feud of patrician and 
plebeian— and ended, at last, like an unsubstan- 
tial pageant, leaving no influence behind it ? But, 
in another point of view, it becomes a more in- 
telligible memorial of the life of a nation that 
had a destiny to fulfil, an appointed work to do, 
— to build up a system of law which should enter 
into modern European and American jurispru- 
dence, and with its strong pagan power to pave 
a path for Christianity to travel into the vast 
regions which at one time were included within 
Roman dominion. 

Now, turning to American history, and 
especially that portion of it which is de- 
voted to the Union, it is possible, I believe, 
to place the events in such combinations, to 
discover in them such a concurrent tendency, 
as to leave no room to question that those 
events were controlled as the secondary causes 
of the results to which form was given in 
our system of government. From the latter 
part of the last century, — from the year of 
the adoption of the Constitution of the United 
States of America, with its primary purpose 
of forming a more, perfect union, — back into the 
century of English colonization, — back still 
earlier to the years of discovery, and even 
earlier yet to those remote centuries in which 
— many generations before Columbus or Cabot 
— European eyes, we may believe, beheld this 



10 



THE UNION. 



continent for the first time, — throughout that 
long tract of time, there is, I do not fear to 
say, a tendency, more or less visible, towards 
the future results, and not least among those 
results towards this Union. That tendency may 
be traced both in what was frustrated and in 
what has been achieved ; so that all things seem 
to lead to this result, the predominance in North 
America of one European race, and that the 
race which speaks the English tongue. I thus 
entitle it for the want of a better and briefer 
name. The title "Anglo-Saxon" is hardly ade- 
quate or expressive enough for a breed of men 
in whose veins there runs the mingled current 
of Saxon and Norman blood, perhaps of ancient 
British, Celtic, Roman, and Danish blood. From 
the earliest time in which intercourse began be- 
tween the Eastern and Western hemispheres, 
down to our own day, the great movement has 
been the extension of what may be called Saxon- 
dom—& part of that larger movement, not con- 
fined to North America, but extending to South- 
ern Africa, to India from Ceylon to its northern 
mountains, and to Australia and the islands in 
the distant seas,— the movement which is carry- 
ing the language and the laws of our race widely 
over the earth. 

My present purpose is to look at this movement 
as it has a connection with American history, 
and especially with the Union; and, without 



TnE UNION. 11 

attempting iu any way to make historical facts 
bend to hypothesis, to show that the history of 
discovery, the history of colonization and of 
colonial government, all establish this historical 
truth, that the work of laying the foundation of 
a great political system in North America was 
reserved for the race that speaks the English 
language, by whatever name we may choose to 
call that race ; further, that, in order to develop 
so essential a part of that system as the union 
of a federal republic, the work was reserved for 
the English race at a particular period of their 
history in the mother-country. Thus it is to 
remote causes that we are to trace that political 
power which animates a government extending 
from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

It seems to me that there is no consideration 
better calculated to deepen in the mind of every 
reflecting citizen a reverence for the Union than 
a just sense of its origin; and that is to be 
acquired by the studious asking and answering 
of this question, How was this Union formed ? 
Has the origin of the Union a date — a day or a 
year? Can we find its epoch — as of indepen- 
dence, or of the confederation, or of the Constitu- 
tion? "Was it done in convention? Did men 
come together by some delegated authority and 
deliberate in solemn council and ordain a Union ? 
Never. It was the work of time, the natural 



12 



THE UNION. 



consequence of events, a growth from circum- 
stances, or whatever other phrase may be used 
as a substitute for an express acknowledgment 
of a Providence in the destinies of mankind. It 
is not possible to trace the Union to any pre- 
meditated plan, the idea of any one man, or the 
concert of any body of men. You can find no 
authority to pronounce it the direct product of 
human foresight, of political wisdom and ex- 
perience. You cannot point to any day in our 
history, and say that on such a day Union ex- 
isted, and on the day before there was nothing 
of the kind. In truth, the Union was not made ; 
it grew. It grew as the tree grows, planting its 
roots deeper and deeper, and lifting its branches 
stronger and stronger and higher and higher, its 
vital forces coursing upward and outward to its 
lightest leaf. The Union grew as the forest 
grows, and the seed was not sown by man's 
hand. This element of government is at the 
same time an element of national character. It 
is part of the life of Saxon liberty, and it came 
with the Saxon race to be developed and ex- 
panded in a land which seems to have been 
reserved to be the Saxon's heritage. 

Whatever may have been accomplished when 
European enterprise began its work on this con- 
tinent with those long-unknown or forgotten dis- 
coveries of the Scandinavian navigators, who, Rve 
hundred years before Columbus, were the first to 



T II E U N 1 N. 13 

behold these western shores, those obscure voy- 
ages left no abiding influence here. The North- 
man had no distinct destiny here ; and, idle as it 
would be now to speculate on such a future as 
there might have been if Scandinavian discovery 
had been followed by conquest and settlement, 
one cannot help thinking how fruitless would 
have been the strife between the savage native 
races and the fierce uncivilized barbarians of the 
Northern seas. This land was not meant for the 
Northman's home. The voyages of the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries passed away, leaving no 
trace behind them, and, what was more important, 
leaving the land open to the enterprise of other 
and distant generations who had a destiny here. 

When, in the fifteenth century, the South of 
Europe was stirred by the spirit of maritime 
adventure, and Portugal took the lead in it, the 
enterprise of that kingdom found a southern and 
not a western direction, in the voyages along the 
western coast of Africa, planned by that remark- 
able personage, Prince Henry, (a Plantagenet by** 1 
the mother's side, let me say in passing.) This 
land was not given to the race of Portugal first, 
though they were among modern discoverers. 

"When Spain slowly followed the career of 
which the neighbouring kingdom had set the 
example, and when Columbus had nearly crossed 
the Atlantic, steering due westward to the con- 
tinent of North America, then only a few days' 



14 T II E U N 1 N. 

sail distant, a flight of birds, as is familiarly 
remembered from the well-known story, were 
seen winging their way across the course of the 
vessels ; and the great navigator, following those 
pilots of the air south westward, lost the con- 
tinent, and the power of Spain was planted only 
on the islands. As a flight of birds gave, accord- 
ing to the legend, augury for the first doings of 
Rome's history, so in another way it has a place 
in our earliest annals. Again, on his second 
voyage, the path of Columbus lay among the 
islands ; and when the papal power was invoked 
to determine the disputes between Spain and 
Portugal, respecting their rights of discovery, 
and Alexander VI. adjudged his famous partition, 
which seems to appropriate to these two con- 
tending powers all that was discovered and all 
that was to be discovered in the New "World 
— soon after this exercise of power, (more 
than human by one less than human in the 
crimes that have made the name of Borgia in- 
famous,) soon after, the sovereign of a country 
which held slacker allegiance to Rome gave the 
commission to the Cabots, and that authority, 
which has been well styled " the oldest American 
State paper," set the Saxon foot upon this soil, 
the first of European feet to touch the continent. 
The land was not meant, either by claim of dis- 
covery or by papal gift, to be the Spaniards' 
home. The two small English vessels which had 



T II E U N 1 N. 15 

cleared from Bristol, "with authority to sail to 
all parts of the east, west, and north, under the 
royal banners and ensigns, to discover countries 
of the heathen unknown to Christians, to set up 
the king's banner there, to occupy and possess, 
as his subjects, such places as they could subdue, 
with rule and jurisdiction," coasting along per- 
haps some thirty degrees of latitude, from La- 
brador to Virginia, gave to an English race their 
title here. Thus early, within a very few years 
after the beginning of western discovery in the 
fifteenth century, was laid the foundation of 
future dominion ; for, whatever other European 
races might thereafter seek a home on this por- 
tion of the continent, it would be only for such 
partial or temporary occupation as would sooner 
or later be absorbed by the race which was 
then, in that era, the first to touch the main- 
land. It was thus that the way was prepared 
to make the country the heritage of that race 
which speaks the English tongue, — a race in 
whose institutions the name of people was 
never lost, whether in their furthest antiquity 
in the forests of Germany, or under Saxon, 
Danish, or Norman rule, after their migration to 
Britain, whether under the kingly confederacy 
of the Saxon, or under the power of the strongest 
Norman sovereigns, Plautagenet or Tudor ; so 
that, with the popular element ever present, 
every political struggle has been either to regain 



16 THE UNION. 

something lost, or to expand and improve some 
ancient right. 

In studying the originating influences of our 
institutions, political and judicial, there can be 
no question, I believe, but that the first influence 
is to be sought in the character of the race. 
Powers and habits of thought and feeling come 
to us with our blood, and extend to all who come 
within the range of their influence. "We have 
but expanded what the Saxon began more than 
a thousand years ago, before, indeed, the races 
of the North had a history of their own or a place 
in the history of the more civilized South. The 
influence of race is most obvious when we think 
of the inheritance of the common law, or such a 
special tradition, from unknown origin, as the 
trial by jury. My present purpose is to trace the 
agency of the same principle, I mean the influence 
of race, where it is less apparent, in that .part of 
our political system which is expressed by the 
term "the Union," and then to follow it onward 
through the processes of colonization and the 
course of colonial government. 

The question to be considered is, what element 
was there in the Anglo-Saxon character and 
institutions which, being transplanted to this 
country, and being left to freer and more unre- 
strained action, would facilitate the formation of 
a federal government — of a Union? Such an 
element is to be found in the tendency to local self- 



THE UNION. 17 

government which is characteristic of the race, 
and is conspicuous in the history of their institu- 
tions. This is a tendency the very reverse of that 
which is described by such terms as " centraliza- 
tion" or "consolidation" Saxon freedom has, no 
doubt, been held chiefly on the tenure of this 
principle, that the central power of the State has 
always recognised a great variety of local powers. 
Even with regard to metropolitan influences, 
how obvious is it that London has never been to 
England what Paris has been and is to France, 
whether royal, imperial, or republican France ! 
It has been justly said that " centralization and 
active life pervading the whole body are hard to 
reconcile ; he who should do this perfectly would 
have established a perfect government. * * * 
It seems to be a law that life cannot long go on 
in a multitude of minute parts without union ; 
nay, even without something of that very cen- 
tralization which yet, if not well watched, is so 
apt to destroy the parts by absorbing their life 
into its own ; there must be a heart in the political 
as in the natural body to supply the extremities 
continually with fresh blood." — [Arnold.) 

Now, throughout the whole history of our race 
— the race that speaks the English tongue here 
and in England, during the threescore years of 
our Constitution, during the brief existence of the 
confederation, during the contentional colonial 
period between 1763 and 1776, and during the 

2 



18 THE UNION. 

earlier colonial times, or, in the mother-country, 
during the various eras of the history of the race 
there — it has heen the combination of these two 
principles — the principle of centralization and the 
principle of local independence — that has distin- 
guished the race, that has made its power, its 
safety, and its freedom. Political strength and 
health have heen in the just distribution and har- 
mony of these powers, having an archetype, it 
may be said, in the tranquil and perpetual har- 
mony of the solar system — the noiseless on- 
goings of the stars. In the political system of 
the Saxon — royal or republican — the danger has 
ever been in any excess of eitheH;he centripetal 
force on the one hand, or the centrifugal on the 
other. Whatever variations there may have been 
from time to time, this may, I believe, safely be 
pronounced the great Saxon characteristic, — a 
habit of local government, exercised in a certain 
subordination, or rather relation, to a central 
government. And further, it would not be diffi- 
cult to discover in such distribution of power in 
local institutions much of the discipline, the 
training for more expanded opportunities of 
government, which has helped onward what ap- 
pears to be the destiny of the race. Observe 
how, after the Saxon occupation of Britain, the 
conquered territory, small comparatively in ex- 
tent, was divided into several petty kingdoms, — 
those loosely-compacted kingly commonwealths 



THE UNION. 19 

which were to form the heptarchy; and again, 
how each of these was parcelled out into those 
various divisions, the counties, shires, hundreds, 
tithings, and other partitions, the origin of which 
perplexes the antiquarian. The old Saxon spirit 
of local independence and authority animated 
the local institutions, assemblies, tribunals of 
various kinds, with an energy that never could 
have been developed under a strongly-controlling 
central power. 

When the Norman conqueror sought to com- 
plete the subjugation of England, by introducing 
the laws and institutions of his own country and 
a rigorous establishment of the feudal system, 
all this Saxon variety of law, of usage, of man- 
ners, and of men, was a perpetual hinderance, 
which it was part of the conquest to do away 
with. The conqueror's strong hand was laid on 
the free diversities which the Saxon had been 
used to of old, for conquest, dominion, empire 
demanded more of a submissive uniformity ; and 
accordingly, as an instance of it, we find the con- 
queror introducing, for the administration of 
justice, an office unknown to the Saxon, — the 
office of chief-justiciar. The biographer of the 
English Chief-Justices remarks, in the opening 
sentence of his work : — 

" The office of Chief-Justice, or Chief-Justiciar, 
was introduced into England by William the 
Conqueror, from Normandy, where it had long 



20 THE UNION. 

existed. The functions of such an officer would 
have ill accorded with the notions of our Anglo- 
Saxon ancestors, who had a great antipathy to 
centralization, and prided themselves upon en- 
joying the rights and the advantages of self- 
government. 

* * * «j u Normandy, the interference of 
the supreme government was much more active 
than in England ; and there existed an officer 
called Chief-Justicjar, who superintended the 
administration of justice over the whole duke- 
dom, and on whom, according to the manners of 
the age, both military and civil powers of great 
magnitude were conferred." Lord Campbell 
adds in a note: — "It is curious to observe that, 
notwithstanding the sweeping change of laws 
and institutions introduced at the conquest, the 
characteristic difference between Frenchmen and 
Englishmen, in the management of local affairs, 
still exists after the lapse of so many centuries ; 
and that, while with us parish vestries, town 
councils, and county sessions are the organs of 
the petty confederated republics into which Eng- 
land is parcelled out ; in France, whether the form 
of government be nominally monarchical or re- 
publican, no one can alter the direction of a road, 
build a bridge, or open a mine, without the au- 
thority of the ' Ministre des Ponts et Chaussees.' 
In Ireland, there being much more Celtic than 
Anglo-Saxon blood, no self-reliance is felt, and 



T II E U N I N. 21 

a disposition prevails to throw every thing upon 
the government." 

This Saxon characteristic is to be discovered 
not only in the number but also in the diversity 
of local institutions, arising from diversity of 
character and traditional influences. Although 
in the course of time — many centuries — such 
diversities have been smoothed down by many 
assimilating processes, perhaps no country on 
the face of the earth, within so narrow a space, 
presents so great a variety of customs as England 
continues to do. Habits, manners, the tenure 
of land, rules of inheritance, display a free variety 
strongly contrasted with the servile uniformity of 
governments with stronger controlling central 
powers. Usages which appertain to the North 
Briton are unknown to the South Briton, — the 
man of Kent, or Cornwall, or "Wales. The cities 
and towns have a variety of municipal power 
and privilege resting on the authority of imme- 
morial usage. 

The origin of all this diversity, in which there 
has been developed so much of practical power, 
is to be traced to the same cause which has trans- 
mitted it to America, — the mode in which the 
land was occupied by the successive races who 
came to its shores. The Roman conquerors and 
colonists, the continued migrations of the Saxons, 
the abiding incursions of the Danes, the conquest 
by the Norman, each brought and left an influ- 



22 



THE UNION. 



ence, a set of laws or customs at the least ; and 
in the after-ages, no tyranny was strong enough 
or senseless enough, no revolution was rash 
enough, to attempt that w^orst of all revolutionary 
havoc, total obliteration of the past, the absolute 
subjugation of local variety and independence. 

Such diversity may possibly offend the merely 
speculative mind, which is apt to crave that which 
is squared and levelled to a more theoretic exact- 
ness and completeness ; but it is the power which 
has been disciplined by such diversity, and the 
freedom that accompanies it, which has spread 
the race over the earth, and has engendered our 
Union. It is well known that in material nature, 
in the lower orders of creation, considerable 
uniformity is met with ; but that the higher we 
ascend the more diversity is found. A great 
modern historical philosopher adopted, as a lead- 
ing principle in his science, this truth, that "as 
in organic beings the most perfect life is that 
which animates the greatest variety of numbers, 
bo among States that is the most perfect in which 
a number of institutions originally distinct, being 
organized each after its kind into centres of na- 
tional life, form a complete whole." 

Now I believe that it is possible to show that 
during the whole of our colonial era, during what 
may be called the 'primitive period of our political 
institutions, the whole course of events tended 
to the establishment of this principle thus philo- 



THE UNION. 23 

sophically stated by Niebuhr. I mean to say 
explicitly, that the providential government of 
the doings of men on this portion of the world, 
and with reference to this portion of the world, 
from the discovery of it onwards to the adoption 
of the Constitution of the United States, has led 
on to what has been described as the highest 
form of political life, a republican system includ- 
ing the principle of distributed local government, 
in the parlance familiar to us, "a Federal Re- 
public," or, in the philosophical language of the 
historian whom I just quoted, " a complete whole, 
formed of a number of institutions," originally 
distinct, organized each after its kind into centres 
of life. I am aware that it may sound presump- 
tuous to speak confidently of the purposes of the 
providential government over the world, or over 
portions of it, or over the movements of this or 
that race. But when the principle of a provi- 
dential government of the human race is recog- 
nised, as it must be by every mind whose belief 
has advanced beyond the confines of absolute 
atheism, and also when, during a long course of 
years, — near three hundred years in the case to 
which I wish to apply the principle, — you can trace 
a correspondence between the events of such a 
period and a final result, I do not know why we 
need fear to affirm that those events were provi- 
dentially controlled and guided to that result. 
This conviction is further strengthened when we 



24 THE UNION. 

can perceive beyond such result adequate conse- 
quences, can see how that result was in the future 
to be productive of good. The evidence of such 
consequences is in the knowledge that the form 
of government which alone renders popular in- 
stitutions compatible with extent of territory is 
that form which has its origin in this ancient 
element of Saxon local self-government. "Who 
can question that it is such a political system 
that has expanded this republic from its primitive 
circumscription to its present extent, so that that 
which at first reached not far beyond the sound 
of the Atlantic became enlarged beyond the 
mountains, then beyond the Mississippi, and 
now, having crossed the second great mountain- 
range of the continent, has on its other border 
the sound of the earth's other great ocean? I 
know of no grander traditional influence to be 
observed in history than this simple Saxon cha- 
racteristic element and the mighty issues of it 
now manifest around us, the connection between 
this principle of local government obscurely re- 
cognised in the ancient fatherland of the Saxon, 
carried thence to England to be combined with 
the central power of a constitutional monarchy, 
and now a living principle here, helping, by the 
harmony of State rights and federal energy, to 
extend and perpetuate the republic. 

On an occasion like the present, I do not pro- 
pose to attempt to enter into the details of Ame- 



THE UNION. 25 

rican colonization, or to dwell upon the familiar 
story of our early history, but rather to use 
them only so far as it may be necessary to illus- 
trate the principle I have endeavoured to set 
forth. A rapid review of colonial events, 
brought into a new connection and concentered 
on one principle, will, I hope, answer the purpose 
of maintaining the historical argument which I 
desire to submit to you. There is perhaps 
nothing in our early history which now appears 
more remarkable to us than the long delay on 
the part of the English government, or the Eng- 
lish people, in making use of the title which 
the right of discovery had given them to the 
soil of America. It presents a curious blank of 
nearly a century before any attempt was made to 
occupy or to colonize the newly-discovered land, 
and more than a century before a permanent 
settlement was accomplished. 

It has been remarked, that the only imme- 
diate result of Cabot's voyage and discovery of 
the continent was the importation into England 
from America of the first turkeys that had ever 
been seen in Europe. Such was the beginning 
of the immense commerce between England and 
America. For a long time the right of disco- 
very seemed a barren title ; and it is a noticeable 
fact that while it was the first of the Tudor 
kings whose commission authorized Cabot to 
set up the English banner here, it was the last 



26 TH E I BTION. 

of the Tudor sovereigns who Bought to make 

her title here a reality by planting English 
homes; and indeed the whole dynasty passed 
away without any thing permanent being 
achieved. Doubtless, the delay was salutary. 

It was propitious for the future : and perhaps 
we can conceive how it was so when we recall 
the character of Tudor dominion and the spirit 
of the age. It was not the temper of that 
dynasty to give the colonial free-agency (it 
might almost be called independence) which 
was to prove the germ of republican nation- 
ality. It was not the spirit of that age to ask 
for so large power of local government as by 
a later generation was quietly assumed and ex- 
ercised. The ancient Saxon element of local 
self-government could not well have been trans- 
planted here while the strong rule of the Tudor 
was centralizing so much about the throne: and 
therefore (I speak of it as an inference in the 
logic of history) the whole sixteenth century 
passed away and the land was still the natives' : 
for. when the year 1600 came, there was not an 
English family, no English man or woman, on 
this continent, unless perchance there was wan- 
dering somewhere some survivor of Raleigh's 
lost colony. 

It would be vain now to speculate upon the 
influence which might have been exercised on 
the destinies of our country if that which was 



r ii E v n i on. 27 

the perishable colonization of the sixteenth 
century had been permanent. But a know- 
ledge of what was attempted, and of the man- 
ner of it, serves to show that it would have 
been different in character, and therefore in its 
influences, from the later colonization. 

When, in 1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert ob- 
tained from Queen Elizabeth letters patent, 
authorizing him to discover and colonize re- 
mote and heathen lands, — the first grant of the 
kind ever made by an English sovereign, — there 
was conferred upon him almost a monopoly of 
the right of colonization, with privileges and 
authorities for the government oi' his designed 
colonies of almost indefmite extent, and with 
a prohibition upon all persons attempting to 
settle within two hundred leagues of any place 
which lie or his associates should occupy dur- 
ing the space of six years. While we may 
deplore the adverse fortunes of this brave 
voyager, — his baffled enterprises and the pious 
heroism of his dark perishing in the mid-At- 
lantic, — it is not to be lamented that a scheme 
of colonization so vice-regal in its character 
should not have been accomplished. The same 
comment may be made on the grant to Sir 
"Walter Raleigh, — which was of prerogatives and 
jurisdiction no less ample, — to end, after re- 
peated efforts and the well-known expeditions 
which lie sent out to the New World, in disap- 



28 THE UNION. 

pointment and a name ; for all that has proved 
perpetual from those enterprises is the word 
"Virginia" — a title given, for a considerable 
time, to an almost indefinite region of America. 

Let me here take occasion to state that some 
recent investigations of the State records in Eng- 
land, and particularly a hitherto unnoticed entry 
on the close-roll of the statutes of Elizabeth, 
have established the fact that another illustrious 
public man of those times — Sir Philip Sidneys- 
had turned his earnest and active mind to Ame- 
rican discovery, and probably contemplated a 
voyage in his own person to the Western hemi- 
sphere. That he did so as early as 1582 — which 
was earlier than the voyages equipped by Ra- 
leigh — is a fact the evidence of which has but 
very lately been discovered, and was published, 
for the first time, only in the month of February, 
1850. It appears that Sidney obtained from Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert, under the queen's patent to 
him, a right to discover and take possession of 
three millions of acres in America. The grant 
was large enough to be almost indefinite,' and is 
another instance to illustrate the policy of colo- 
nization which prevailed in that day. 

Although Sidney's meditated enterprise was 
relinquished, it is pleasing to find associated 
with the early plans of American colonization 
the name of one who has left so matchless a 
memory, — the scholar, statesman, poet, the 



THE UNION. 29 

friend of poets, the soldier whose early death 
was mourned by a nation, — a death memorable 
with its last deed of heroic charity, when, put- 
ting away the cup of water from his own lips, 
burning as they were with the thirst of a bleed- 
ing death, he gave it to a wounded soldier with 
those famous words, eloquent in their simplicity, 
"Thy necessity is yet greater than mine''' 

Permit me to extend this digression a little 
further to notice an American allusion which 
occurs in the English literature of the same 
period in which Sir Philip Sidney flourished. 
When, in 1590, Spenser gave to the world the 
first part of "The Faerie Qiieene" he dedicated 
that wondrous allegory to "The most high, 
mighty, and magnificent Empresse, renouned for 
pietie, virtue, and all gracious government, 
Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of Eng- 
land, France, and Ireland, and Virginia." Yes, 
there stands the name of that honoured State, — 
then, as it were, the name of British America; 
and, while there is many a reason for the lofty 
spirit of her sons, the pulse of their pride may 
beat higher at the sight of the record of the 
"Ancient Dominion" on the first page of one 
of the immortal poems of our language. 

To return to my subject. It can readily be 
perceived that such schemes of colonization as 
were planned during the reign of Elizabeth — 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert's, Sir Philip Sidney's, Sir 



30 THE UNION. 

"Walter Raleigh's — could hardly have resulted 
otherwise than in the establishment of vast 
feudal principalities, to continue under rulers 
who would have been no less than viceroys, or 
to be resumed under the immediate sovereignty 
of the throne. Such occupation of the land 
could scarce have led on, by any natural 
sequence and series of events, to a popular 
government, — still less to a political system in 
which the element of "Union" would exist. 
There would not have been enough of partition. 
There would not have been enough of either 
the spirit or the privilege of distinct and sepa- 
rate colonization, — the establishment of com- 
munities independent of each other, destined 
in a later age to grow so naturally into Union. 
Colonization then would have been too much 
like that of France in Canada, — something far 
more regular and uniform and. imposing in ap- 
pearance as an affair of State, but fraught with 
no such momentous power of development as 
was latent in the freer Saxon method. There 
would have been far less of that "wise and salu- 
tary neglect' which Mr. Burke spoke of when, in 
his speech on conciliation with America, he 
said, "The colonies, in general, owe little or 
nothing to any care of ours. They are not 
squeezed into this happy form by the con- 
straints of watchful and suspicious government; 
but, through a wise and salutary neglect, a 



THE UNION. 31 

generous nature has been suffered to take her 
own way to perfection." It was, indeed, "a 
wise neglect." But let me add that it was a 
wisdom which cannot, with accuracy, be pre- 
dicated of a passive, negative, neglectful State 
policy, but of the providential guidance of the 
race by which there was bestowed upon them 
the freedom of self-discipline, of political power 
and expansion. It sounds like a paradox and a 
contradiction; but it is an obvious truth that 
the first element of union is separation, — dis- 
tinctiveness of existence and of character. The 
history of union begins not with unity, but with 
the creation of such separate existences as in the 
future may, by some process of assimilation 
and connection, become united but not consoli- 
dated, — forming a complete whole, the portions 
of which do not lose their distinct organization. 
Passing onward from the perishable colo- 
nization of Queen Elizabeth's times to that 
which proved permanent, it is apparent that 
it did take that form, and direction, and cha- 
racter, the natural though distant results of 
which are to be seen in what is now around us. 
This holds good of the whole period of Euglish 
colonization in America, from James the First 
to George the Second, — a century and a quarter; 
from the arrival of the first permanent colony 
in Virginia, and the building of Jamestown, 



32 THE UNION. 

(1607,) down to Oglethorpe's settlement of 
Georgia, in 1732. 

The grant to Sir Walter Raleigh having be- 
come void by his attainder, British America 
was again in the king's gift, — and that king the 
first of the Stuarts. Now, although the notions 
of royal prerogative which were cherished by 
the Stuarts were as high as those of the Tudors, 
still, the relative position of the sovereign was 
changed, for the progress of constitutional go- 
vernment had developed new sentiments of alle- 
giance and new powers of resistance. The 
seventeenth century, which, in fact, may be 
called the century of American colonization, for 
it comprehends nearly all of it, was more pro- 
pitious than the previous century to the planting 
of colonies destined to grow to a republic. The 
process of partition now began, — giving scope 
to the ancient Saxon principle of local govern- 
ment. It was at first, as is well known, a 
simple, twofold partition ; for, when King 
James the First granted the patent for the ter- 
ritory stretching from the 34th to the 45th 
degree of latitude, he divided it between the 
two companies, the Southern or London com- 
pany, and the Northern or Plymouth company. 
By virtue of these grants, and the settlements 
under them, the country was parcelled out into 
two great divisions, soon known by the familiar 



THEUNION. 33 

designations of Virginia for the former and 
New England for the latter. 

I do not propose on an occasion like this to 
trace the detailed series of grants and settle- 
ment: it is enough for the present to remark 
that the course of colonization was a continued 
process of partition ; so that in 1732, at the time 
of the Georgia settlement, the strip of territory 
along the coast of the Atlantic which then 
formed British America was divided into the 
thirteen colonies, — a colonial system fashioned 
into thirteen distinct political communities. 

This was not merely territorial partition. 
Political and social varieties distinguished the 
colonies. This was a consequence of what was 
a remarkable peculiarity in the English settle- 
ment of America, that colonization was indi- 
vidual enterprise, receiving the sanction but not 
the support or assistance of the government. 
'No colony in the seventeenth century, to which 
period they nearly all belonged, had any direct 
aid from king or Parliament. The solitary ex- 
ception occurred in a parliamentary grant of 
aid to the Georgia colony. Colonization, which 
was individual enterprise, partook of the variety 
of individual character and motive — of the dif- 
ferent and even conflicting principles, civil and 
ecclesiastical — which were dominant or depressed 
at different periods of the seventeenth century. 



M T II E U N I N. 

This, it seems to me, is well worthy of notice, 
that no century of English history, either earlier 
or later, was so calculated to give character — 
and varied character, too — to the colonies, as 
that which was the century of colonization, — 
the Seventeenth. It was an age in which the 
activity of the nation, theretofore busy in other 
directions, was turned to questions of govern- 
ment. The thoughts of men were anxious 
and occupied, — not with questions respecting 
the succession of this or that branch of a royal 
family, but with the principles that lie at the 
very foundation of government, the limits of 
power, and the rights and duties of the sub- 
ject. It was an age — better than any other 
in the annals of the mother-country — fitted 
to send, along with the sons who left her to 
seek a distant home, the dutiful spirit of loy- 
alty, willing obedience to law, and the dutiful 
spirit of freedom, — the two great principles of 
constitutional government. There was political 
variety, as well as social; for the colonial go- 
vernments, although all bearing a resemblance 
to the government of the mother-country, had 
those distinctive characteristics by which they 
are classified into the Royal, the Proprietary, 
and the Charter governments. 

It seems strange that the colonial policy of 
one kingdom should admit of such a diversity, 



THE UNION. 35 

that, in some, the king's control was perpetually 
present; in others it was transferred to lords- 
proprietary, subjects to whom was given the 
half-kingly power of palatines ; and in others so 
free were the charters that the people, for a long 
time after the royal authority was wholly abro- 
gated by independence, asked no change in 
them. Strange as such colonial diversity ap- 
pears, it was far more favorable to the future 
results than any uniform system of govern- 
ment. 

I have endeavoured to show that a principle, 
which may safely be said to be a characteristic 
of our race in all regions of the earth, has been 
brought hither to become a great element in our 
national system; and, further, that throughout 
the whole period of discovery and colonization, 
whatever was adverse to that principle was 
checked or frustrated ; while, on the other hand, 
the tendency of events was to the steady de- 
velopment of that principle, — the creation of the 
materials for Union. 



LECTURE SECOND. 



SECOND LECTURE. 

The Growth of the Colonial Union — Relations to England as "Home" — The Old 
French War — Travelling in the Colonies — Washington, Quincy, Reed, and 
Dickinson — The Colonial Post-office — Franklin — The New England Confede- 
racy of 1638 — Geographical Peculiarities — Rivers and Mountains — Contrast 
with European Physical Partition — The Protector Cromwell — Eudicott's In- 
terview — The early Political Congresses — The Mission to Canada in 1775 — 
French Canadians — The Swedes on the Delaware — The Dutch in New York — 
Religious Sympathies and Antipathies — Louisburg — The Albany Congress of 
1754 — Conclusion — The Union the Work of God. 

Having considered the partition of British 
America into the several colonial governments, 
I propose now to ask your attention to the 
events and influences which combined without 
consolidating them: — in -other words, the for- 
mation, or, more properly, the growth, of the 
Union. For this process there were needed 
two powers of an opposing nature, — a central- 
izing and a repulsive power ; the former to give 
connection, the latter to preserve the distinctive 
local organization. 

Let me remark, by way of introduction, that 
in studying the history of the Union the mind 
is peculiarly exposed to that unconscious delu- 
sion, so frequent in historical studies, which con- 
sists in allowing notions and impressions of the 
present time to enter inappropriately into our 

37 



38 THE UNION. 

estimate of the past. It is thus that we often 
deceive ourselves with unperceived anachron- 
isms. The complicated framework of our po- 
litical system has been for more than half a 
century acquiring strength and solidity by its 
actual working and by the imperceptible pro- 
cesses of time. There are the countless inter- 
changes arising from an active commercial 
spirit; the progress of the arts is speeding 
and facilitating intercourse to an extent never 
dreamed of in the olden time ; there are the 
thousands of social affinities of interest and 
affection by which fellowship is created and con- 
firmed between various and remote sections of 
the country. Conceive for an instant the possi- 
bility of a knowledge of the written intercom- 
munication, on any one day, transmitted by the 
agency of the post-office or the electric telegraph : 
what a story it would tell of strong and incalcu- 
lable affinity, — political, commercial, social, — of 
community of traffic and of feeling, precious and 
far-reaching ! So habitually familiar to us is all 
this, that when we turn to an early era of our 
history we are apt, unawares, to carry our present 
associations back where they do not belong. 
Familiar as we are in our clay and generation 
with the recurrence and easy gathering of con- 
ventions, composed of delegates from all parts 
of the Union, for every variety of purpose, — 



THE UNION. 39 

ecclesiastical and political, scientific, educational, 
commercial, agricultural, and fanatical, — we are 
prone to underrate the difficulties of intercourse 
in former times of more laborious travelling. 
In the early colonial period the colonies took 
little heed of each other. There was inter- 
dependence between a colony and the mother- 
country, but not between one colony and another. 
This was, perhaps, a consequence of the policy 
which was restriction on the commerce and 
manufactures of the colonies. It was, in a 
great measure, in accordance, too, with the feel- 
ings of the colonists, for Old England long had 
a place in their hearts ; but what was New Eng- 
land to Virginia, or Virginia to I^ew England ? 
"Home" was the significant and endearing title 
which continued to be applied, with a perma- 
nence of habit that is remarkable, to the mother- 
country. "When the news of the great fire in 
London, in 1666, reached Massachusetts, sub- 
scriptions of money were made throughout the 
colony for the relief of the sufferers. 

It appears, too, both from documentary history 
and from private correspondence, how limited 
was the intercourse between the inhabitants of 
the different colonies. In the biographies of 
men whose movements are of sufficient conse- 
quence to be traced and recorded, but few in- 
stances of the kind can be collected. Washing- 



40 T II E U N I N. 

ton, in 1756, travelled as far eastward as Boston, 
and in the next year he visited Philadelphia ; bnt 
both these visits were occasioned by peculiar de- 
mands of a public nature connected with the Old 
Trench War, — the first, for the purpose of a per- 
sonal interview with the commander-in-chief, 
Governor Shirley; the second, to attend a con- 
ference of governors and officers, summoned by 
Lord Loudoun. These are, I believe, the only 
occasions, before the beginning of the Revolu- 
tion, when he attended the Congress of 1774, 
that "Washington went to the northern or middle 
provinces. Mr. Quincy's visit to the middle and 
southern colonies, immediately before the Revo- 
lution, was (as is obvious from the record of it) 
an undertaking of quite an unusual character. 
In 1773, writing home from Charleston, he speaks 
of " this distant shore.'" No other instance occurs 
now to my recollection, except a visit to Boston 
of two of the Philadelphia patriots, — John Dick- 
inson and Joseph Reed, — a few years before the 
war of independence. Even as late as the meet- 
ing of the first general Congress, — that, I mean, 
of 1774, — there is much, it appears to me, in the 
private letters and other contemporary evidence 
of that period which shows that when the dele- 
gates to that Congress assembled they came 
together very much as strangers to each other 
personally, and representing, too, communities 



THE UNION. 41 

strange to each other but finding more conge- 
niality than they had anticipated. 

In thus noticing individual intercouse, as illus- 
trative of the times, there is one case, indeed, 
which I have not spoken of, because it is clearly 
exceptional, and must so be considered in judging 
of the personal intercommunication during the 
colonial period. I refer to the case of Dr. Frank- 
lin. Boston-born and Philadelphia-bred, he had, 
no doubt, in consequence, a less provincial feel- 
ing, a more expanded sense of citizenship, which 
was favored too by the course and opportunities 
of his remarkable career, his personal activity, 
and his official positions. No man had so much 
to do with various colonies ; for, not to speak of 
his wanderings in boyhood, we find him, under 
his appointment in 1753 as Postmaster-General 
for America, travelling in his one-horse wagon 
from Pennsylvania into New England ; — again, 
in conference with delegates from seven of the 
colonies at the Albany Congress of 1754, busy 
at Boston with Governor Shirley ; at Philadelphia 
with a Massachusetts commissioner, and all in 
quick succession ; in Maryland acting as a sort of 
unofficial quartermaster for General Braddock; 
at a later period of colonial history, in England, 
uniting the agencies of Pennsylvania, Massachu- 
setts, and Georgia. Now, although undoubtedly 
the formation of the Union is to be traced to 



42 T II E U N I N. 

causes of deeper import than any individual in- 
fluences, I cannot but think that such various 
and extended intercourse as Dr. Franklin's must 
have aided in no small degree in bringing about 
that community of civic feeling which at length 
took the shape of political union. Sagacious, 
practical, affable, a man of the people in the best 
sense of the term, led by official duties hither 
and thither through the land, brought into busi- 
ness-relations with the highest and the humblest 
functionaries, governors and generals and village 
postmasters, Franklin cannot but be regarded as 
an instrument imperceptibly and unconsciously 
doing the work of union. His case was, however, 
an exception to the ordinary intercourse among 
the inhabitants of the several colonies, and as an 
exception proving what we are apt to lose sight 
of, that the formation of the Union was a slow, 
a laborious, and reluctant process. Happily so, 
for thus it gained a strength which no hasty or 
premature coalition ever could have acquired. 
The period of transition from the original state 
of political severalty to the present political com- 
bination may be described as a space of time not 
shorter than a century and a half, making the 
computation from the first distinct effort at 
union, the original suggestion in 1637 of that 
little local coalition styled " The New England 
Confederacy," down to the Declaration of Inde- 



THE UNION. 43 

pendencc ; or, if a later date be preferred, when 
in 1789 the Union was made " more 'perfect" by the 
adoption of the present Constitution. During 
this long period the processes of combination 
were going on silently, imperceptibly, seldom 
thought of, and never fully appreciated ; advances 
sometimes made, and then the cause retrograd- 
ing; the power of attraction prevailing at one 
time, and the power of repulsion at another; 
connection at one period looked to for security, 
and again shunned and resisted as concealing 
danger. 

It is not without interest to observe that there 
was nothing in the physical character of the 
country, with all its variety of soil and climate, 
which presented impediments in the formation 
of the Union. There was no natural frontier at 
any part of the territory occupied by the settle- 
ments which were for a long time limited to 
the country extending from New Hampshire to 
Georgia, and bounded by the ocean and the first 
great range of mountains. 

Eivers flowing north and south are thought to 
be most influential upon civilization, perhaps by 
connectiug the climate and soil of different lati- 
tudes. When our territory w r as expanded to 
receive the whole valley of the Mississippi, we 
can look back to the long and difficult negotia- 
tions respecting the navigation of that river, 



44 T II E U N I N. 

when its banks were held by different powers, as 
indicating that Nature fitted it for a great high- 
way for one people, and to bind them strongly 
together forever. 

No bay or river interposed a dangerous or diffi- 
cult navigation ; indeed, the great livers, the 
Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Hudson, and 
the Connecticut, each flowing through the terri- 
tory of several colonies, served by their free 
navigation to facilitate the intercourse of the 
colonists. There was no such mountain-inter- 
section as would cut off by a natural barrier one 
portion of the country from another, such as has 
been observed in Italy, where only a few years 
ago, a Neapolitan naturalist, making an excursion 
to one of the highest of the Central Apennines, 
found medicinal plants growing in the greatest 
profusion which the Neapolitans were regularly 
in the habit of importing from other countries, 
as no one suspected their existence within their 
own kingdom. 

Looking to the physical character of the con- 
tinent in relation to the subject of social and 
political union, I may allude to another consi- 
deration as affecting our national progress and 
permanence. It has been observed by a distin- 
guished French naturalist that mountain-ranges 
which run east and west establish much more 
striking differences with regard to the dwellers 



THE UNION. 45 

on the opposite sides than those ranges which 
extend north and south, — a statement confirmed 
by observation through the history of mankind. 
The Scandinavian Alps have not prevented the 
countries on both sides being occupied by a 
people of common descent, while the feeble bar- 
rier of the Cheviot Hills and the Highlands has 
served to keep the Anglo-Saxon and the Celt 
apart even in a period of advanced civilization. 
The Spaniards and the Italians differ more from 
their neighbours across the mountains extending 
east and west than the former from the Portu- 
guese, or the Piedmontese from the Provencals. 
Of this physical law of civilization and the des- 
tiny of races the most remarkable illustration is 
perhaps to be found in the separation, which con- 
tinued through so many centuries of ancient 
history, of the races that occupied the northern 
coasts of the Mediterranean and the races that 
dwelt in Central Europe. There is no more 
remarkable fact in the history of mankind ; and 
the barrier which so wondrously preserved this 
separation between populous nations compara- 
tively so near to each other was that east and 
west mountain-range, which extends from the 
western extremity of the Pyrenees, at the shores 
of the Atlantic, eastward to the shores of the 
Caspian. It was a partition that remained un- 
broken by either the southern or the northern 



46 T II E U N I N. 

race, with rare and only partial exceptions, until 
at length the time arrived for those vast irrup- 
tions by which a new civilization was to take the 
place of the ancient and the Roman. The appli- 
cation of this law of Nature to our own race 
occupying this continent is manifest, and it is 
of momentous interest in connection with the 
origin, the extension, and the perpetuity of the 
Union. The mountain-ranges, great and small, 
extend in a northwardly and southwardly direc- 
tion, but none in that direction which seems to 
have a power for partition over the races of men. 
It is only conventional lines running east and west 
that perplex the nation. 

The physical character of the territory occu- 
pied by these colonies which were to become 
the thirteen United States was favourable to 
the establishment of Union. Further, it may 
be regarded as favourable to the same result 
that during the colonial period no addition of 
territory took place which might have intro- 
duced an incongruous element, — unmanageable 
material to be brought into union. In making 
this remark, I have especially in my thoughts 
the failure of Cromwell's plan for securing his 
then recent conquest of Jamaica by co-operation 
with Massachusetts in planting a New England 
colony there. The Protector's proffered gift of 
a West India island was declined by the prac- 



T II E U N I N. 47 

tical good sense of the General Court of the 
colony; and thus the community which was 
destined to grow in compact strength on their 
own soil was saved from being parted into two 
communities with the ocean between them. 
The interview between Cromwell and Leveret, 
the agent of the colony, as narrated by the latter 
in his despatch to Governor Endicott, (Decem- 
ber 20, 1656,) is curiously characteristic on the 
one hand of that intense and deep policy which 
is part of the mystery of the Protector's cha- 
racter, and, on the other, of the keen, clear- 
sighted common sense of the representative of 
the colony. 

"At my presenting," writes Leveret, "your 
letter of the 1st of December, 1656, to his High- 
ness, he was pleased to inquire of New Eng- 
land's condition, and what news as to the 
business of Jamaica ; to which I gave answer 
according to the advice received. By his resent 
thereof, together with what I had from him the 
18th November, he manifested a very strong 
desire in him for some leading and considerable 
company of New England men to go thither ; 
for at that time he was pleased to express that 
he did apprehend the people of New England 
had as clear a call to transport themselves 
from thence to Jamaica, as they had from Eng- 
land to New England, in order to their bettering 

4 



48 THE UNION. 

their outward condition, God having promised 
his people should he the head and not the tail ; 
besides that design hath its tendency to the 
overthrow of the man of sin ; and withal was 
pleased to add, that though the people had been 
sickly, yet it was said to be a climacterical year ; 
that others had been to view the place, as Nevis 
people, who, upon liking, were gone down ; and 
Christopher's people were upon motion ; and 
he hoped, by what intelligence he had from 
Captain Gookin, that some considerable num- 
bers w T ould go from New England. His High- 
ness was pleased to hear me in what I objected. 
As to the bettering our outward condition, 
though we had not any among us that had to 
boast, as some particulars in other plantations, 
of raising themselves to great estates, yet take 
the body of the people, and, all things con- 
sidered, they lived more comfortably like Eng- 
lishmen than any of the rest of the plantations. 
To which his Highness replied that they were 
more industrious: what then would they be in a 
better country? To which I added, that there 
were now in New England produced to bespeak 
us a Commonwealth greater than in all the Eng- 
lish plantations besides ; the which his Highness 
granted. I, objecting the contrariety of spirits, 
principles, manners, and customs of the people 
of New England, to them that were at the island 



THE UNION. 49 

or on any other plantations that could remove 
thither, so not like to cement, his Highness 
replied that were there considerable persons that 
would remove from thence, they should have 
the government in their hands, and be strength- 
ened with the authority of England, who might 
be capable of giving check to the ill and vicious 
manners of all." — Hutchinson's History, vol. i. p. 
176. 

We need not now speculate what might have 
been the effect on a people who had this con- 
sciousness of much that bespoke them a common- 
wealth, had they been tempted away from their 
own stern clime and soil to dwell in a tropical 
island ; but of this we may be assured, when we 
look forward to the subsequent career of that 
people, that it was happily provided that they 
should remain compact at home. 

In like manner, at a later period of our his- 
tory, all the efforts which at the beginning of 
the Revolutionary struggle were made to bring 
the other British provinces into co-operation 
with the thirteen colonies proved utterly in- 
effectual. It will be remembered, that when 
the first General Congress met in 1774 and 
deliberated on plans of peaceful resistance to 
the obnoxious policy of the mother-country, it 
was a matter of solicitude to increase and fortify 
that resistance by enlarging the sphere of it. It 



50 THE UNION. 

must be borne in mind that all that was then 
aimed at was colonial redress ; to that, and not 
to independence, did the first Congress direct its 
thoughts, its words, its action. The events of 
that time followed in such quick succession, 
leading so rapidly on to Independence, and now 
seen to be so rapidly connected with such a 
result, that we are apt to forget that independent 
existence as a nation was not, for some time 
after the contest began, aimed at, or even de- 
sired. The heart of the people felt and avowed 
a sincere and natural reluctance to break away 
from an ancient allegiance. Thus contemplating 
a continuance of the colonial condition and not 
looking beyond it, the desire was to render 
colonial resistance as effective as possible, by 
bringing as large an amount of it as possible to 
bear on the ministry and parliament. Accord- 
ingly, repeated exertions were made to induce 
all the colonies to make common cause. The 
Congress, composed at first of the delegations 
of twelve colonies, from New Hampshire to 
South Carolina, appealed to the other colonies, — ■ 
]STova Scotia, St. Johns, — and earnestly and ur- 
gently to Canada. The addresses to these 
British provinces fill a large space in the journal 
of the first Congress. The hope was that all 
British America might be brought to think, 
feel, and to act in unison in a cause then 



T II E U N I N. 51 

regarded as a temporary one, — simply colonial 
redress, the restoration of a former colonial 
policy with which the colonist was content. 

And here let me remark in passing that this 
attempted policy of general colonial co-operation 
appears to me to explain both the use and the 
disuse of a term which for several years was a 
very familiar one, but afterwards became obso- 
lete in our political vocabulary and for a long 
time has had only a historical significance. I 
refer to the word "continental ," as employed both 
formally and familiarly in the titles "The Con- 
tinental Congress," "the Continental Army," and, 
in a phrase of less agreeable association, " the 
Continental currency." The term was an appro- 
priate one when it was meditated to make the 
colonial resistance coextensive with the British 
communities on the continent; and such was 
the plan when the word came into use ; and it 
passed into disuse when it was at length ascer- 
tained that such enlarged co-operation was not 
to be accomplished, but that out of the conflict 
there w T as to arise a new nationality, not coexten- 
sive with the continental extent of British power 
in America. 

The second Congress — I mean that of 1775 — 
clung to the same hope and the same policy of 
colonial combination on the most enlarged 
scale; and this feeling continued even after the 



52 THE UNION. 

beginning of hostilities. Again did Congress 
address to the non-participant provinces elabo- 
rate appeals and invitations ; again did they 
communicate arguments to Canada to demon- 
strate the hidden perils of the Quebec Bill, to 
show the superiority of the common law over 
the civil law, to expound religious toleration, 
persuading the French Canadian that Roman 
Catholic and Protestant might dwell together 
securely and harmoniously as in the cantons of 
Switzerland. 

Nay, further, the Congress indulged the ex- 
pectation of even more than cis- Atlantic opposi- 
tion, for it sent its voice from Philadelphia 
across the sea to the people of Ireland. In the 
earliest scheme of confederation, — that sub- 
mitted to Congress by Dr. Franklin, in July, 
1775, — one of the articles expressly provided for 
the admission of Ireland, the West India Islands, 
Quebec, St. John's, Nova Scotia, Bermudas, and 
East and West Floridas, into the "Association," 
which was then relied upon as a means of 
colonial redress. 

Besides the appeals and the invitations ad- 
dressed to the Canadians, there was a hope that 
a successful invasion of Canada might bring the 
population there into that support of the com- 
mon colonial cause for which the other means 
had failed. Accordingly, the expedition under 



THE UNION. 53 

Montgomeiy, in the winter of 1775-76, had a 
purpose additional to mere conquest, — that of 
gaining the support and the assistance of their 
fellow-colonists. 

Still clinging to this object, Congress resorted 
to one other and the last attempt, — an embassy 
to speak in person to the Canadian, — the com- 
mission, composed of Dr. Franklin, Charles 
Carrol, and Samuel Chase, taking with them for 
their coadjutors a Roman Catholic priest, the 
Rev. John Carrol, (afterwards Archbishop of 
Baltimore,) and equally pacific agents, — a printer 
and a French translator. 

All these efforts, — addresses made and made 
again, invasion, the embassy of commissioners, — 
all proved utterly unavailing in bringing to those 
early Congresses any co-operation from other 
British provinces. The addresses were not 
responded to, probably were hardly heeded ; the 
military expeditions failed, and the commis- 
sioners found no audience. The printer who 
accompanied Dr. Franklin and the other com- 
missioners proved of no avail, in consequence 
of an unanticipated but fatal obstacle, and that 
was that reading was a very rare accomplish- 
ment with the French Canadian population. 
Quebec was not more impregnable to Mont- 
gomery than were the minds of the Canadians 
to Franklin and a printing-press. 



54 THE UNION. 

These schemes for more extended colonial 
combination — begun in 1774, continued during 
1775 and into 1776 — all came to naught; and 
now we can see, what was not visible to those 
who conceived those schemes, how happy it was 
that they did come to naught. I do not mean 
to question or to disparage the sagacity of those 
colonial statesmen who during three years 
persevered in those schemes and the various 
methods of accomplishing them. Judged with 
relation to the objects aimed at, those schemes 
were wise and patriotic ; but the objects were 
only colonial opposition, and the combination 
which was contemplated was only to be a tem- 
porary one, to cease whenever the colonial 
grievances should cease. But in God's govern- 
ment over the destinies of the race and country 
other and greater results were in reserve, — inde- 
pendence, nationality, union; and, considered 
with relation to such results, I repeat it was most 
happy that all attempts to bring about Canadian 
combination proved absolutely fruitless. It was 
only eleven years before, let it be remembered, 
that Canada had been transferred, by conquest 
and the treaty of Paris, from French to British 
dominion. A province so recently foreign in 
laws, in language, in the various social elements, 
must needs have proved an incongruous, if not 
a discordant, member in such a union as was on 



THE UNION. 55 

the eve of completion between the thirteen 
colonies. The very fact that it was necessary 
for Congress to cause the addresses to Canada 
to be translated into French is of itself enough 
to show how little congeniality there would have 
been for the perpetual purpose of union. When, 
therefore, Canadian sympathy and co-operation 
were invoked, " a wiser spirit" was at work to 
make that invocation of no effect. 

While the addition of these incongruous mate- 
rials was happily prevented, it must not be for- 
gotten that the portion of the continent which 
was to be the soil of the Union already included 
within its bounds — indeed, in its very centre — 
elements equally foreign and unsuitecl to natural 
combination; for, almost contemporaneous with 
the settlement of Virginia and of New England, 
in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, 
Hudson's voyage had created the claim of Hol- 
land, and the grant by the States-General to the 
Dutch West India Company planted their settle- 
ment along the banks of the Hudson. Thus 
was introduced into the very heart of the land 
a hostile element; for England and Holland 
were at strife in the East Indian commercial set- 
tlements, in which region the massacre of the 
English traders, at Amboyna, occurred about 
the same period. 

Another occupation — foreign, but less antago- 



56 THE UNION. 

nistic — was that which connects with American 
history the name of one of the wisest and no- 
blest of Europe's continental kings, the states- 
man and soldier, Gustavus Adolphus, of Swe- 
den ; a company of whose subjects settled, it 
will be remembered, on the banks of the Dela- 
ware. 

Settlements such as these, by two of the great 
European powers, and on most important sec- 
tions of the continent, were unpropitious to any 
progress of union among the British colonies; 
for the foreign and unfriendly occupation was 
interposed between the northern and the south- 
ern settlements, — an occupation held, too, by one 
of these foreign powers for wellnigh half a cen- 
tury, and during all that time ambitious of 
larger colonial dominion, and actively aggres- 
sive. 

For the removal of these impediments to our 
union there was needed the strong control of 
conquest. In one respect that process was sim- 
plified, as if the course of things was so guided 
as to leave behind as little as possible of ill 
blood and rankling recollections. There was 
engendered no animosity between the Swedes 
and the English colonists ; for it was Holland 
that did the work of conquest and subjugated 
the little Swedish colony on the banks of the 
Delaware. 



THE UNION. 57 

For England there was, therefore, left only 
one colonial adversary; and the adverse element 
of a foreign occupation of a considerable and 
important part of the continent was done away 
by the result of the war between England and 
Holland ; the treaty of Breda, and the final ces- 
sion of the territory, thus establishing English 
colonial dominion in uninterrupted occupation 
of the whole extent of the country which was 
thereafter to be in union. 

It would, perhaps, not be easy now to mea- 
sure the sense of repugnance which survived in 
the minds of the conquered Dutch colonists; 
the natural reluctance at the transfer, by con- 
quest, of their allegiance ; the compulsory iden- 
tification with a people who had other laws and 
usages, and another language. But, whatever 
these feelings may have been, they met soon 
with what must have been a most unlooked-for 
alleviation in the course of events in Europe; 
for it was only twelve years after the Dutch colo- 
nists in America passed under British do- 
minion, that their native country, Holland, gave 
a sovereign to Great Britain, and thus the 
throne of their conquerors was filled by one of 
their countrymen, him who had been their 
Stadtholder, their Prince of Orange. Thus 
British rule became less of foreign rule to 
them ; and thus the Revolution of 1688 may be 



58 THE UNION. 

referred to as having contributed a harmonizing 
influence to the progress of the American 
Union. 

The Dutch dominion in America, adverse as 
it was to union in one respect, by parting the 
northern from the southern English colonies, in 
another respect exerted an influence favourable 
to colonial combination. It was not only the 
presence of hostile Indian tribes on the ]N"ew 
England frontier, but it was also the neighbour- 
hood of the Dutch, " that prompted the first 
effort of colonial union, — that of the united colo- 
nies of New England," which had its beginning 
in 1643, the first "confederacy," — the first time 
the word "confederacy" was used, in America. 
It was the first of these combinations, serving 
to show how it was a sense of common danger, 
the sense of strength and security in united 
action, which, by slow and safe gradations, was 
to bring the several colonies into union, dis- 
closing, from time to time, how natural it would 
be for the sentiment of social union, which all 
the while, no doubt, however unrecognised at 
the time, was growing strong, to be converted 
into political union ; how the sense of brother- 
hood, of a community of citizenship, would im- 
perceptibly prepare itself to assume political 
form and consistency. 

I cannot pause to comment on that early con- 



THE UNI OX. 59 

federacy, its principles, its system, and its uses. 
It purported to be "a perpetual league of friend- 
ship and amity;" and it contained provision for 
its enlargement by the admission of other colo- 
nies into the confederacy with the four colo- 
nies who were the contracting parties. Limited 
as this confederacy was in the number of its 
members, cautiously restricted as it was in its 
powers, and close and pressing as the dangers 
were, five years were consumed in the plan- 
ning of it; perpetual as it professed to be, it 
lasted no more than about forty years. No 
other colony was added to it; and, as the 
dangers which suggested it passed away, the con- 
federacy lost its interest, and when its existence 
ceased incidentally with the abrogation of the 
New England charters, in the reign of James II., 
no effort was made to renew it. The old Saxon 
principle of distinctive local government was at 
work even within the narrow circuit of these 
kindred Puritan colonies, and no adequate 
motive for union presented itself. There are 
traces of mutual jealousies there. Especially 
was there jealousy of the centralizing authority 
of Massachusetts. This feeling was manifest in 
the solicitude on the part of the Plymouth 
colony to preserve its separate existence. It 
breaks out in the bitter humour of a not very 
felicitous pun on the Bay colony, in a despatch 



60 THE UNION. 

from the Plymouth agent to the Plymouth 
governor, when, writing from London in 1691, 
he says, "All the frame of Heaven moves upon 
one axis, and the whole of !New England's in- 
terest seems designed to be loaclen on one bot- 
tom, and her particular motion to be concentric 
to the Massachusetts tropic. You know who 
are wont to trot after the bay horse." — Wiswall 
to Hinckly, IsTov. 5, 1691; Hutch., i. 365. 

In the K"ew England confederacy, unanimity 
in religious creed was an essential principle of 
political concord, — an impediment to the progress 
of union, if the confederacy had continued; for 
admission was refused to their dissenting fellow- 
colonists of Rhode Island. The Puritan clergy 
who went to Virginia were ejected for non-con- 
formity; and it was only about twenty years 
before William Penn obtained the charter for 
Pennsylvania, and came with his Quaker follow- 
ers, that the "Friends" who ventured into "New 
England were scourged under the law against 
" vagabond Quakers," and the sterner penalty 
of death inflicted. 

If at an early period sectarian animosity was 
burning lines of division between the colonists, 
the now tolerant Christianity of a later time 
contributed largely to the more accordant results 
of blending the communities together. Each 
Christian society was at length enabled peace- 



THE UNION. 61 

fully to commune with its own brotherhood in 
other sections of the country, and thus eccle- 
siastical sympathy became one of the means by 
which the way was prepared for civil and po- 
litical sympathies. The inhabitants of different 
and distant colonies became members of one 
household in their faith, thus learning, perhaps, 
how they might become members of one po- 
litical family. Among the churches of the 
church of England in the colonies, no ecclesias- 
tical union in one collective representative as- 
sembly was formed until after the peace of 1783. 
The Presbyterians, feeling the want of eccle- 
siastical combination, as appears from a circular 
letter of the ministers and elders at Philadelphia, 
began, in 1764, to take measures to effect a 
union of their scattered forces. 

I turn now to another and very different in- 
fluence of union, which is to be discovered in 
the military colonial combinations. On repeated 
occasions the authorities of the colonies — w>- 
vernors and commissioners — were brought into 
connection for conference respecting hostilities, 
offensive as well as defensive. It was upon 
such an occasion, in 1690, at ]STew York, that 
the word "Congress" first has a place in our his- 
tory. But, besides such occasional conferences, 
the colonists were brought together in joint 
military service, to know each other the better 



62 THE UNION. 

thereby. This kind of association may be traced 
as an influence of union, more or less operative 
on different occasions, from the times of what 
were called "King William's War" and "Queen 
Anne's War," at the close of the seventeenth 
and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
down to the peace of Paris, in 1763, at the end 
of the Old French War. The colonies contri- 
buted their respective sums of money to the 
general cost of the war ; and their troops served 
together in the several early attempts on Ca- 
nada, in the expedition against Cape Breton 
and the capture of Louisburg, and upon what 
was the first foreign service of the colonists, 
(I mean foreign beyond the continent,) Ver- 
non's disastrous expeditions against Carthagena 
and Cuba. The associated service in the Old 
Trench War was the latest discipline of the 
' kind to prepare the colonies for the war of the 
Revolution. 

While such influences, and others of a more 
imperceptible nature, which I cannot now pause 
to discuss, were working propitiously for union, 
there was a counter-agency produced by the 
indications of a desire on the part of the British 
government to adopt a different colonial policy, 
— to substitute for " that wise and salutary neg- 
lect," which Mr. Burke afterward commended, 
a more active control. In carrying out such a 



THE UNION. 63 

policy there would be needed more of union; not 
spontaneous, voluntary colonial union, but com- 
pulsory union, by the imperial power on the other 
side of the Atlantic. It was at the close of the 
seventeenth century that "William the Third 
formed the standing Council of the Lords-Com- 
missioners for Trade and Plantations, vested 
with new and centralizing powers of superin- 
tendence. There had been in the more arbi- 
trary reign of James the Second indications 
of the same policy of active colonial control ; 
and it made itself manifest in the new methods 
of colonial administration, their policy and their 
plans, — in one instance, nothing less than a re- 
commendation that " all the English colonies of 
North America be reduced (' reduced' — such was 
the word) under one government and one vice- 
roy." The consequence of all this was, that 
union began to present itself to the thoughts of 
the colonists in the obnoxious light of a means 
of increasing the ascendency of the royal pre- 
rogative ; and they watched with perpetual vigi- 
lance every approach to combined action, to 
union avowedly or covertly compulsory, as some- 
thing that was fatal to colonial rights. 

The ancient Saxon element of distributed 
power was quickened into renewed activity 
during a long period of apprehension. When, 
in consequence of the suggestion of the Board 

5 



64 THE UNION. 

of Trade and of the colonial secretary, the Al- 
bany convention was held in 1754, with its dele- 
gations from seven colonies, extending as far 
south as Maryland, the plan of union pro- 
posed by that Congress was, as is well known, 
rejected, although the war with France was im- 
minent, and although the author of the plan 
was Franklin himself, a delegate from Pennsyl- 
vania. The several colonial assemblies detected 
too much of prerogative in the scheme of 
union, which had the singular fate of proving 
also unsatisfactory in England, because of the 
opposite objection of too little prerogative. 
Franklin was discouraged in his hopes of co- 
lonial confederation ; and one of his correspond- 
ents said to him, writing from Boston, in 1754, 
"However necessary a union may be for the 
mutual safety and preservation of these colonies, 
it is certain it will never take place unless we 
are forced to it by the supreme authority of the 
nation." 

It was by the action of the supreme power 
of the nation that union did take place, but 
not in the way contemplated when those words 
were used. When the new and obnoxious co- 
lonial policy took the well-defined shape of the 
Stamp Act, union, which had been dreaded 
when the proposal came in any form from the 
British government, was instinctively resorted 



THE UKION. 65 

to as a means of defence and security, and 
the delegations of nine colonies, as far south 
as South Carolina, met in the Congress of 
1765. 

When, nine years later, the power of the British 
government struck, with the Boston Port Bill, at 
one single point, the sentiment of union was dis- 
covered to be strong enough and quick enough 
to make common cause with almost instanta- 
neous rapidity ; and twelve colonies (soon after- 
wards to reach the full complement of the old 
thirteen) assembled by their delegations in the 
Congress of 1774. "When it is considered that 
those delegations were chosen in various ways, 
with much of irregularity, of necessity, I know 
of nothing so remarkable in the history of re- 
presentation as the meeting of those fifty-two 
men in a room of a building familiar to Phila- 
delphians as the Carpenters' Hall, locking the 
doors, enjoining by word of honour secrecy on 
the members, and all the while the people from 
New Hampshire to Georgia waiting quietly, 
willingly, resolutely, prepared to do, I will not 
say the bidding of that Congress, but to accept 
the conclusions of that Congress as the voice of 
the nation. What higher proof could there be 
of the unknown strength of union ? I say the 
unknown strength of the sentiment of union, be- 
cause that Congress contemplated nothing more 



66 THE UNION. 

than "association" (as it was termed) in a policy 
of non-importation and non-exportation. When 
the Congress of 1774 adjourned, it was a contingent 
adjournment, leaving it to be determined by the 
course events might take whether the colonies 
would again be found acting in concert. The 
plan of confederation proposed by Franklin, in 
1775, looked to no duration beyond the con- 
tinuance of the obnoxious acts of Parliament ; 
and even after the war began and the Continental 
army was formed, perpetuity of union appears 
not to have formed part of the plan of opera- 
tions. It was not until the wearied patience of 
the people was worn out, and the aggrieved 
sense of freedom driven to the last resort, that 
the coalition of the colonies began to assume 
the aspect of permanence. Then, and not till 
then, it became apparent what had long been 
the tendency of things touching the relation 
between those distinct communities. Together, 
they had sought redress for their grievances^ 
together, they had declared their rights; they 
appealed, petitioned, remonstrated together; 
and, when they encountered the same repulse 
and the same disappointment, they " associated" 
under solemn pledges, " the sacred ties of vir- 
tue, honour, and love of country," for a com- 
bined pacific resistance. At length, when all 
had failed, and they saw that the hour had 



THE UNION, 67 

come for the last appeal, they bowed down 
together in "public humiliation, fasting, and 
prayer;" and, with hearts thus fortified, they 
stood prepared to face the common danger. It 
was one war to all. Blood was soon shed ; and 
that blood, poured out for the common cause of 
all, was the seal of union. Further, when hos- 
tilities had been continued for more than a 
year, and it became manifest that the war was 
ineffectual as a means of mere colonial redress, 
the process which established national existence 
was at the same time the consummation of 
union. The colonies, which found themselves in 
a state of revolutionary anarchy, instead of 
hurrying to separate action, deliberately sought 
the advice of the whole country as it might be 
given by Congress. They sought and they fol- 
lowed that guidance. This was union. When 
the final and formal act of independence came, 
it was done by all and for all. That was union. 
Therefore, there is, I think, no proposition in 
our constitutional history clearer, simpler, truer 
than this, that Union is our country. 

In conclusion, permit me to say that I fear I 
have exposed myself to some condemnation for 
rashness in attempting to treat so large a sub- 
ject within such limited space. I have had it 
most at heart to show how, during a very long 
period of time, there has been a tendency of 



68 THE UNION. 

events proving a providential purpose in the 
establishment of the Union. However the feel- 
ings of men may differ in respect for antiquity, 
what mind can refuse to recognise a claim for 
all that can be given of thoughtful, affectionate, 
and dutiful loyalty to that which for our good 
was achieved by more than human agency 
working through centuries? For the Constitu- 
tion of the United States you may carry your 
debt of gratitude to the memory of that assem- 
bly of sages and statesmen who in convention 
constructed the Constitution. The debt of 
gratitude for Independence may be paid to that 
other assembly of wise and good men who de- 
clared it. But for the Union, our thanksgiving 
must be laid at the foot of the throne of God ; 
and, therefore, treason to the Union cannot be 
conceived of but as a crime which heaps upon 
the traitor an accumulated guilt of thankless 
impiety. I speak it with reverence and with 
humility, and with thoughtfulness in the words 
I use, when I say that this Union of ours was 
the work of God. 



THE END. 



PARRY & MCMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS. 



Beed's Lectures on English Literature. 

Lectures on English Literature, delivered in the Chapel 
Hall of the University of Pennsylvania by Professor 
Henry Reed. With a Portrait. Edited by his brother, 
William B. Reed. 1 vol. 12mo, cloth - §1.25 

[Extracts of a Utter from Professor C. C. Felton, of Harvard.] 

Cambridge, May 21, 1855. 
Gentlemen : 

I have read, with much pleasure and instruction, the Lectures of the late 
Professor Reed, on English Literature, published by you. 

Among the greatest improvements made in our higher schools within a few 
years, there is none, in my opinion, more important than the increased atten- 
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tion. * * * * As a guide and companion in this department of education, 
the volume of Professor Reed's Lectures appears to me truly admirable. The 
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moral and religious tone is every thing that could be desired for a work to be 
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of elegant letters, better suited to cultivate and purify the taste, and to excite 
the enthusiasm of pupils. 

I am, gentlemen, very respectfully, yours, C. C. FELTON. 

Messrs. Parry & McMillan. 

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* * * * The third lecture of the volume, on the English language, is in 
itself a monument of the varied and extensive learning and acquirements of the 
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Lectures ox English History, 

As illustrated by Shakspeare's Chronicle Plays, and on 
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Elizabeth ; and it is wonderful to be made to understand, by the continuity of 
such a mode of illustration, how complete the course is. Marlborough's con- 
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all he knew of English history he learned from Shakspeare's plays; and Mr. 
Reed shows us now how complete, and thorough, and accurate, the Poet's know- 
ledge was. There is throughout a happy blending of criticism and history, and 
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high degree to that reputation. * * * * These Lectures require no praise. No 
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great minds of every age. That they are valuable additions to the historical 
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leave of the volume without expressing our satisfaction with the manner in 
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